Is Longhorn All Bull or Full of Holes?

From Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Main Entry: long·horn
Pronunciation: -"horn
Function: noun
Date: 1834
1 a : any of the long-horned cattle of Spanish derivation formerly common in southwestern U.S. b : TEXAS LONGHORN 2
2 : a firm-textured usually mild cheese (as cheddar or Colby)

Okay, so is Microsoft's Longhorn all bull or full of holes?

Option 1: A Lot of Bull. What's completely incomprehensible is that it's a lot of hype a little too early. C'mon, the release is expected sometime 2006, worse yet, when we real applications showcasing its usefulness come into being? The upside of all this hype is that it legitimizes the concept of an asynchronous loosely coupled architecture.

This is something that many JMS vendors have embraced unfortunately given little emphasis by the JCP. Just witness how much work is put on a flawed concept like EJB. Fortunately JCP is working on JBI that addresses some of the issues.

Option 2: Full of Holes. The biggest flaw in Longhorn is the approach Microsoft has taken. Maybe they should pick up some ideas from this list of rules. The point here is that incremental developments in the Java world will come at a earlier and at a more frequent pace than this one massive upgrade.

While Java developers would be gaining crucial insight and experience building on emerging technologies such as AOP, AOM, P2P etc., .NET developers would be stuck in limbo praying that license 6 doesn't expire on them before Longhorn gets shipped.

In conclusion, Longhorn is the best thing that Microsoft could have done to widen the gap between the Java haves and the .NET have-nots.